The present invention relates to process compliance, and in particular, to process compliance measurement.
Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Reference models offer a set of generally accepted processes that are sound and efficient. Their adoption is generally motivated by the following reasons. First, they significantly speed up the design of process models by providing reusable and high quality content. Second, they optimize the design as they have been developed over a long period and usually capture the business insight of experts. See W. M. P. van der Aalst, A. Dreiling, F. Gottschalk, M. Rosemann, and M. Jansen-Vullers, Configurable Process Models as a Basis for Reference Modeling, in C. Bussler et al. (eds.), BPM '05: Intl. Workshops on the Business Process Reference Models, vol. 3812 of LNCS, pages 512-518 (Springer Berlin, 2006). Third, they ease the compliance with industry regulations and requirements and, thus, mitigate risk. Fourth, they are an essential means to create a link between the business needs and information technology (IT) implementations. See W. M. P. van der Aalst et al. (previously cited above).
The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a set of guidance published as a series of books by the Office of Government Commerce. These books describe an integrated best practice approach to managing and controlling IT services. See OGC, Official Introduction to the ITIL Service Lifecycle (Stationery Office Books, London, 2007). The Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT) has been developed by the IT Governance Institute to describe good practices, to provide a process framework and to present activities in a manageable and logical structure. The Supply Chain Operations Reference Model (SCOR) provides a unique framework, which links business process and technology features into a unified structure to support communication among supply chain partners and to improve the effectiveness of supply chains. See Supply-Chain Council, Supply Chain Operations Reference Model (SCOR, 2006).
A process is compliant in terms of the introduced reference models if the process is implemented as described by the reference model and the process and its results comply with laws, regulations and contractual arrangements. See W. M. P. van der Aalst. Verification of Workflow Nets, in ICATPN '97: Intl. Conf. on Application and Theory of Petri Nets, pages 407-426 (Springer Berlin, London, UK, 1997). Other popular reference models include the APQC Process Classification Framework SM (PCF) (see APQC, American Productivity & Quality Center, <www.apqc.org/pcf>, 2008) and the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) (see CMMI, Software Engineering Institute, <www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/>, 2007).
Process mining algorithms have shown a considerable potential for assessing the compliance of instances with reference models. See A. K. Alves de Medeiros, A. J. M. M. Weijters, and W. M. P. van der Aalst, Genetic Process Mining: A Basic Approach and its Challenges, in C. Bussler and A. Haller (eds.), BPM '05: Intl. Workshops on Business Process Management, vol. 3812 of LNCS, pages 203-215 (Springer Berlin, Nancy, France, 2006); A. Rozinat, M. Veloso, and W. M. P. van der Aalst, Evaluating the Quality of Discovered Process Models, in W. Bridewell et al. (eds.), IPM '08: Intl. Workshop on the Induction of Process Models, pages 45-52 (Antwerp, Belgium, 2008). The instances are typically recorded by process-aware IS and serve as a starting point for reconstructing an as-is process model. The derived model can be compared with other models (e.g. reference models) using existing algorithms to determine the equivalence of processes.